Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the hCG Protocol presents an intriguing, yet complex, solution to obesity. Author Robin Phipps Woodall has spent years studying the work of the late Dr. Albert T. W. Simeons, who pioneered the use of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) to trigger extreme weight loss. The hormone is found in the urine of pregnant women. Dr. Simeons, who died in 1970, wrote a book called Pounds and Inches which detailed his theories regarding the injection of hCG to treat obesity. To work successfully, the injections must be accompanied by a very low calorie diet.

Woodall explores and expands on Simeons’ ideas throughout Weight-Loss Apocalypse. She emphasizes that regardless of diet industry attempts to market the hCG protocol, this isn’t a fad diet. Administered in two tightly controlled phases of several weeks each, the protocol must be monitored by a doctor in order to be successful. The hormone must be prescribed, though doctors are generally skittish about granting patients request for this therapy. The FDA isn’t in favor of it either, which only makes things more complicated.

Woodall seems to have done her research, breaking down the science behind the hCG protocol in terms the layperson can understand. I’m not even going to try to outline it in detail, but Woodall’s writing is clear and easy to follow. In short, the daily injections of hCG stimulate the protein hormone leptin, which regulates appetite. The stimulation of leptin staves off symptoms of starvation, allowing the patient to eat a maximum of 500 calories per day during treatment. Excess body fat is consumed as an energy source, rather than muscle tissue. Woodall outlines what kinds of food and beverages are allowed during the protocol. As one might imagine, it is very limited. Strict followers of the protocol report dramatic weight loss, with dozens of pounds disappearing in a matter of weeks.

To those desperate to lose weight, this all might sound like a miracle. But Woodall doesn’t shy away from detailing the extreme self-discipline necessary for the protocol to work. Cheating with disallowed foods, even minor slip-ups, will ruin the results. It’s all very interesting, but ultimately most people wil never have the chance to try it. Again, without the go-ahead from a licensed doctor, hCG cannot be legally obtained. Homeopathic hCG was readily available until the FDA ordered its removal from the market. But that’s a good thing, as Woodall explains, because the homeopathic products were a scam to begin with – free of anything but trace amounts (if that) of hCG. With hCG so difficult to obtain, the protocol isn’t an option for the average person. And for those who do manage to get a prescription, few of them will have the will power to stick with the low calorie diet.

The most applicable aspect of Weight-Loss Apocalypse, for most people anyway, is the way Woodall tackles the issue of emotional eating. Woodall discusses the need for people to change their relationship with food if they expect any weight loss, hCG-induced or otherwise, to be permanent. Her warning that the hCG protocol is not a magic bullet for maintaining lifelong physical fitness applies to all methods of weight reduction. The yo-yo diet effect will occur after following the hCG protocol if a person returns to their previous eating habits. From what Woodall says, patients following the protocol are facing an even more immediate and drastic weight gain if they haven’t changed their ways. As an eye-opener to a little-understood weight loss therapy, Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the hCG Protocol is worth reading. Even if it doesn’t send you to your doctor, begging for hCG injections, it may at least provoke some thoughts about changing the way you think about food.